Strange Floods: The Upper Tail of Flood Peaks in the Conterminous US

Abstract:

The strangest flood in US history is arguably the 14 June 1903 flood that devastated Heppner, Oregon. The notion of strange floods is based on the assumption that there are flood agents that dominate the upper tail of flood distributions for a region (severe thunderstorms in complex terrain in the case of the Heppner flood) and are exceedingly poorly characterized by conventional flood records. The orographic thunderstorm systems in the central Appalachians that dominate envelope curves of flood peaks in the eastern US for basin areas less than 1,000 sq. km. and control portions of the global envelope curve of rainfall accumulations at time scales shorter than 6 hours) provide a well-documented example of strange floods. Despite extensive evidence of their occurrence, principally from field-based case studies, they are poorly represented in conventional USGS flood records. We develop methods for examining strange floods based on analyses of the complete record of USGS annual peak observations and on hydrometeorological analyses of the most extreme floods in the US flood record. The methods we present are grounded in extreme value theory and designed to enhance our understanding of extreme floods and improve methods for estimating extreme flood magnitudes.